Book Review – Get Your Share

As a straight, white male approaching my thirties, I don’t have much to complain about when it comes to investment books. Many, if not most, such books seem to assume that they are speaking to someone like me (or someone a decade or two older, at least). As a result, there are some books that attempt to break that trend, focusing on giving advice to, how to put it, non-traditional investors.

Get Your Share is one such book. Written by Julie Stav to help her fellow women get into stock investing, it seeks to help you go from not even knowing what a stock is to being able to trade stocks like a pro. Does it turn the reader into a stock market pro, or leave them with much still to learn? Let’s find out!

Summary

Get Your Share opens with a message from Ms. Stav to her (female) readers, stressing how they need to be willing to invest in stocks, and how their differences from men when it comes to investing can serve to improve their performance. Chapter one looks at some of the excuses that many women give for not investing, from a lack of money to leaving the money decisions to their husbands. All are countered, with the hope of getting women to be more interested in investing on their own. The second chapter introduces the concept of stocks, explaining what they are and how to invest in them. A few basics of reading stock listings and finding a good broker are also covered.

Chapter three looks at the various considerations to look at while seeking a company to invest in, comparing the search to a scavenger hunt. It stresses the importance of looking at the market in general, the sector and industry of interest, and finally the company itself. The fourth chapter focuses on how to compare stocks in order to find good investment options, and how to find this information online and elsewhere. It covers nine factors to consider via fundamental analysis, with the BE A PROFIT acronym; the factors listed are beta, earnings per share, atmosphere, P/E ratio, return on equity, outstanding performance, float, institutional investors, and top dollar.

The fifth chapter looks more at technical analysis, showing how to read stock charts, looking at when to buy the stocks discovered in the fourth chapter. It attempts to show some patterns in order to point out the trends that indicate rising stock prices. Chapter six covers some of the factors you can use to get a better idea of the mood of the marketplace. It looks at factors like moving averages, bullish sentiment, and levels of mutual fund redemptions vs. purchases as means of gauging how optimistic the rest of the market is feeling (and then acting in the opposite manner) in order to find the best time to buy.

Chapter seven covers the other end of the stock purchase, when to sell your stock. It provides six rules for times to sell, from a 10% decline in stock price from its top price since purchase to when it is no longer an outstanding company. The eighth chapter covers mutual funds, discussing what they are, how to investigate them, and how to find ones that will produce sizable gains. The ninth chapter covers another alternative investment option, how to start and build an investment club. It also includes instructions on how to formalize the investment club, when you reach that point.

The tenth and final chapter shows how to divide up your money. It suggests leaving six months’ worth in safe investments like CDs and Treasuries, keeping a sizable amount in retirement accounts that will be kept aside until retirement time, and putting the remaining ‘middle’ portion into mutual funds or stocks. The book ends with an encouraging note, pointing out that you’ll never take care of the big things in your life if you don’t focus on them first.

Pros

Get Your Share is a solid, fairly thorough guide to selecting and investing in stocks. Several of the chapters (particularly in chapter four) show a great deal of depth, covering a lot of material in an understandable manner. The whole book is very easy to follow and usually quite entertaining.

Cons

The emphasis on trading and technical analysis will require a lot of time and energy. (To say nothing of tending to decrease your profit by leaping in and out of the market.) The advice to use any money you won’t need in the next six months to invest in stocks is more than a little dangerous, as some emergencies take more than six months.

Overall

Get Your Share is a pretty interesting book for women (and men, for that matter) who are interested in the stock market. The focus on a more active trading technique is not the best (or most relaxing) of investment methods, but the fundamental analysis techniques given are pretty solid. While not the first investing book I would suggest, if you are looking to get into individual stock investing with a more active trading bent, it’s a pretty solid guide to how to evaluate stocks (while leaving some things to be desired with its broader money-management advice).